Cause {Can’t Resist}

I looked at the 40+ punks in this film and couldn’t help feel that they were more than a bit sad. They appeared desperate to hold onto their long-gone youth, seemingly oblivious to how old and pathetic they will look to many of the much younger kids in that scene. Punks either die; grow up and move on, occasionally visiting again to remind them of their youth; or stay forever trapped there either because they have fashioned a career in the music for themselves or they are too atrophied and unfit for work in the wider world after years of being in the punk scene.

Why do I have a feeling that this article/review written about Susan Dynner’s new documentary entitled “Punk’s Not Dead” is probably more interesting (read: more willing to call a spade a spade in regards to the subject matter) than its filmed counterpart.

At any rate, the article (in the old punk spirit) is a very good read, in that it highlights many rarely mentioned issues that have come about decades after the original punk movement.

One in particular, that most are aware of, is in regards to how “punk” has now become co-opted by the establishment it originally sought to dismantle. Pie-n-the-sky social ideas aside, the subject that I have found to be most affecting in regards to my own personal life is in how, as Daryl Palumbo from Glassjaw eloquently states, “The surfer/punk kids are now the cool kids. They’re the ones picking on and making fun of the Guidos [jocks], etc.”

It’s difficult because music today, regardless of genre, has become so image conscious. Bottom line, regardless of how well acquainted you are with the bands in that scene, if you don’t look the look, you don’t belong. It probably is the most grave thing to have happened to the underground music scenes. I do think however that the more progressive bands that do exist, even though the underground scene may have served as a fertile incubator during their youthful days, now today stand purely for the originality of both themselves and their music.

The irony here is that, at the end of the day, the bands today who are most “punk” or “hardcore” are the bands who look anything but. They are the normal guys like you and me who just enjoy creating some “awesomely sick” music. They don’t have crazy hairstyles or makeup, not because they’re trying to make a statement, but because they just want to live out their lives with a modicum of normalcy and happiness.

Whereas “punk” originally might have been used as a vehicle towards anti-socialism and dysfunction, today, at it most pure, it can bring a wide variety of people together and promote positive social change by promoting the empowerment of the “I” in individual.

“PUNK’S NOT DEAD”: FROM CHEMICAL ABUSE TO MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE by Graham Rae
Punk’s Not Dead (Official Movie Website)